My adventures in fitness, nutrition and dealing with anxiety

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A fortnight with gastroenteritis and trying to get it together.

I haven’t been on recently because I’ve been sick and because I have been busy. My son came down with a bout of the stomach flu and I contracted it soon thereafter. He had it for about 12 hours, I had it for almost 2 weeks. Oh lucky me.

Apparently, folks who have IBS don’t handle the stomach flu well. Makes sense since our digestive system is already sensitive. Thankfully, I didn’t have any bouts of vomiting. I have this fear of vomiting that keeps me from ever having an eating disorder, which I guess is a good thing, but I digress. I have dedicated the past week and a half to regulating my system – that means taking it easy, eating clean (lots of probiotic foods too) and drinking lots of water.

I have been bad about the water part, just call me lazy. I’ll manage to get 5 glasses in on a good day. My coffee to water ratio is about equal right now, and I need to correct that. At one point, not too long ago, I drank more coffee than water.

SO 🙂 My body is still out of sync at the moment, but I’m working my way back on track. This weekend, I kicked my workouts back in gear with Zuzana Light’s ZWOD #2. I was somewhat able to keep up with her 15 minute time – I came in at 16:28. The weather was great in Los Angeles this weekend so I got to hit up this:

The beach! I’m signed up for the Irvine Lake Mud Run this coming March with a few friends, so we decided that some “training” might be a good idea. I was a bit apprehensive about running, I’m not good at it. You can get me out there to do a bootcamp workout confidently, but tell me that I got to run a mile and I become a whiney baby. One of my friends is an avid runner and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up, but, thankfully, I didn’t do as bad as I thought I would. I ran about 2 miles before I collapsed from sheer exhaustion ;). Foodwise, I didn’t do so bad, I had postworkout grilled fish tacos and a bowl of sauerkraut a bit later on. That evening I started wearing a BodyMedia GoFit armband, but I’ll get into that in another post.

The next day was Beach Day 2.0 – The family edition. I started off the day with Zuzana’s ZWOD workout again. My time was 30 minutes this time around! I’m guessing it was because I was very active the day before, so my body was tired, but whatever. I did it!

For breakfast, I had what has to be my favorite cereal mix at the moment:

Koala Crisp rice cereal (awseome and gluten-free)

1 tbsp shredded unsweetened coconut

1 tbsp almond slivers

1 tsp chia seeds

Gobble that up with some unsweetened almond milk. nom nom. 🙂

We got off to a late start and for various reasons, didn’t have time to prepare a meal at home, so we decided to stop somewhere and pick up some food. This is where we ended up:

Going into a burger joint, it’s easy for your diet to spiral out of control. This is a nightmare from a weight loss and IBS standpoint. I can’t say that I made a *perfect* choice, but thankfully Fatburger had a “healthy” option.

I had a veggie burger and skinny fries. I discarded half of the wheat bun and ate less than half of the fries. Fatburger uses boca burgers, which are tasty, but next time, whenever that may be, I’m going to ask them to ease up on the mayo.

The Beach! Oh how I love thee, especially in January. 🙂

I got to bump around the volleyball a bit, chase around my son, dip my feet into that freezing California ocean water. It was a beautiful day.

On the way home, we stopped at Mitsuwa, our neighborhood Japanese grocery store, to go shopping for the week. I should do a post of our typical Mitsuwa shopping trip – sneaking in photos when I can. That would be fun!

Anyway! We bought fixings for an amazing sashimi salad – sushi grade salmon, octopus, seaweed salad on a bed of salad greens tossed with a bit of sesame dressing. I should have taken a picture, but we were famished and scarfed down that meal pronto.

This morning, I did not get to workout, but I did pack my awesome cereal mix to enjoy at the office. LOL!

Hope you’re feeling better. I don’t have IBS (I don’t think), but I have cut way back on white flour and dairy and have had great “digestive results.” A friend of mine suffers from IBS, so I can somewhat appreciate how difficult this is for you.

Thanks! It’s been a struggle, but I have to make peace with it. I don’t think this is a curable condition. 😦
I love chia seeds! I soak them in water with a little bit of lemon juice and drink away. I even have a recipe here for a “flan” using chia seeds, almond milk and honey (or maple syrup for the honey sensitive.)